The
release for March 2010, "The Architects of History",
is a four-part story and is the dramatic climax for
the trilogy for the Seventh
Doctor and his new companion
Elizabeth Klein (played by Tracey Childs). This story
has been written by Steve Lyons and is set in Earth’s
future.

This story
was recorded on the 1st and 2nd August 2009 and has
been directed by John Ainsworth.

Reunited
with the character that he created, Steve Lyons eagerly
took the opportunity to write "The Architects
of History" and bring Klein’s story to
an exciting conclusion.

As
the Klein Trilogy comes to a dramatic climax, it seems
she may finally have made some progress in restoring
the timeline she remembers - a timeline where the Nazis
won World War Two. The question is could Big Finish
Productions do a story where she actually succeeded
but without it getting too messy? To try and answer
this question writer Steve Lyons has revealed: ‘We’ve
tried to do an alternate timeline story, whilst also
keeping it contained’.

As to Klein's
as a companion Big Finish Productions have
had to be careful regarding her origins and aims. ‘I
did try to make her sympathetic’, Steve Lyons
has revealed. ‘I don’t stress the Nazi
views - that actually doesn’t come up a lot,
She hasn’t
thought too hard about what her world was built on,
and that’s something that she has to confront
in this story, as she rebuilds that world. She has
to think about the sacrifices she makes to do it’.

Producer
David Richardson has added to this: ‘This is
us doing Klein on full steam. We really ramp up the action,
the epic space adventure. The plan was always to start
small, and get bigger, and this is our big sci-fi epic,
which takes everything that’s gone before, and
ramps it up to a factor of ten!’

Seventh Doctor

As
well as Klein, Steve Lyons has also employed some of
his other creations from the past. For the first time
on audio, The Doctor will come face-to-face with his
old enemies, the Selachians - a race of aquatic aliens
that the Second Doctor previously met in Steve Lyons’s
The
Past Doctors novels "The
Murder Game" and "The
Final Sanction". As Steve Lyons has revealed: ‘I'm
thrilled to be back writing the Selachians ten years
on, and to be pitting them against a new Doctor in a
new medium. I originally created them for a Second
Doctor base-under-siege story, and so designed them to be very
typical old-school Doctor Who monsters. Their
hobbies are stomping around, firing guns and shouting.
Hopefully,
though, they still have a few surprises up their sleeves!’ Guest stars
include, Lenora Crichlow (who appeared in the 2007 television
story "Gridlock") as Rachel, Lloyd McGuire
(who guest starred in the 1977 story "The
Face of Evil") as Tendexter while Jamie Parker (who starred
in the movie The History Boys) plays Richter. Also starring
are: Ian Hayles, Chris Porter, Rachel Laurence and David
Dobson.

This
story may conclude Klein’s adventures for the
time being, but actress Tracey Childs is reluctant to
say goodbye and has revelled that she is desperately
fond of Klein. So maybe we have not heard the last of
what has turned out to a rather likeable, if different,
companion.

Big Finish Magazine
- Vortex: Issue 13 (March 2010)

Vortex: Issue 13

Issue
13 of 'Vortex - The Big Finish Magazine' was also sent out to subscribers with this release.

In
this issue...

1.
Editorial -
Nicholas Briggs
2. Sneak Previews and Whispers - Doctor Who – The
Lost Stories: The First Doctor Box Set and Doctor Who – Short
Trips

The
year is 2044. Earth is enjoying a Golden Age of peace,
prosperity and technological advancement… but
somebody is plotting to destroy all that. The Selachians,
shark-like alien monsters, launch a crippling attack
on Earth’s Moonbase, using deadly weapons from
the future.

Help is
at hand. A police telephone box appears in a Moonbase
hangar. A time-travelling hero has returned in the
hour of Earth’s greatest need. Now, Elizabeth Klein must fight to save not only the Galactic Reich
but Time itself from the mysterious prisoner who has
orchestrated these fateful events... the Doctor.

On the Inside Cover:

Writer’s Notes: Steve Lyons

It
happened during the recording of Colditz in May
2001. As soon as we heard Tracey’s brilliant
performance, director Gary Russell asked me to
pitch another story for her. Things don’t
always turn out as planned, however, and what with
various delays and changes in direction (at one
point, Klein was slated to turn up in the Forge
series), it’s taken until now for that return
to become a reality.

I’d
had some thoughts about Klein’s immediate
future after Colditz - I’d been nursing them
for eight years - but now, suddenly, there was
a whole trilogy to fill and we needed to take things
much further. John Ainsworth and I chatted about
making her the Doctor’s companion - could
we do that? - and about the image that John had
in his mind of Nazi spaceships in the future. I’m
not keen on alternative timeline stories, because
there’s always a reset switch looming at
the end of them, but perhaps, just perhaps, there
was away...

Director’s Notes: John Ainsworth

With
a gap of eight years between Klein’s first
appearance in Colditz and this new trilogy of adventures,
there’s been quite a build-up to this concluding
adventure. Just like the Doctor, we here at Big
Finish weren’t altogether sure about what
to do with our time travelling Nazi. We knew this
final story had to be big and epic, but as a conclusion
to Klein’s own story, it had to be both satisfying
and surprising.

Happily,
Steve Lyons knew exactly what to do with his creation.
He also, after a bit of nudging from me, brought
his Selachians with him: nasty fish creatures in
shark-shaped body armour. It’s their first
time on audio but they’ve appeared in Steve’s
Doctor Who novels before. They are the quintessential
Doctor Who monster!

I
have enjoyed bringing Klein back for this fantastic trilogy and I am particularly
pleased with The Architects of History. Sylvester and Tracey lead a tap
notch supporting cast and, along with Steve’s excellent script and
some fantastic music and sound design from Jamie Robertson, this sounds
like a first rate Doctor Who adventure to me.

He
has been exploring the universe for hundreds of years. He fights injustice. He
defeats evil. He helps people. In the past, the Doctor has shared his adventures
with friends, but now he travels clone. In this regeneration, the Doctor can
be impish, devious even, but also greatly compassionate; whimsy and melancholy
do battle inside this persona, but the good and the just can always rely on him.

A
committed and ambitious Nazi from an alternative future in which Germany won
the war. Dr Elizabeth Klein made the fatal mistake of travelling bock in time
to Colditz Castle in 1944 in order to meet the Doctor. Unwittingly, her own actions
returned time to its proper course, Germany lost the war and now Klein is all
that is left of a future that no longer exists. She can’t return home,
but is determined to recreate the world that only she remembers. The key to her
dreams is the Doctor’s TARDIS, but changing history can have unforeseen
consequences...